"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless imnsity of the sea."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The gym equipnt supplier was a massive warehouse on the outskirts of Houston. The kind of place where serious athletes ca to outfit serious facilities, and serious idiots ca to blow through budgets. Chris and Joey had been there for two hours already, and from the look on Emily's face when Luca and Ryan walked in, it had been a long two hours.
"Finally!" She grabbed Luca's arm and pulled him aside. "Joey's testing so resistance contraption with more cables and pulleys than our engine room. It's got like forty attachnt points, adjustable arms that swing every direction, and a touchscreen for so reason. We're not training NFL quarterbacks here." She grabbed Luca's arm and pulled him aside and added, in a very loud whisper. "Chris is talking about climbing walls."
"Climbing walls?"
"Plural." Emily's eyes were wide. "He wants three."
Luca found Chris in the back, glued to a cable cross machine. Sweat beading on his forehead. Perfect form, because Chris always had perfect form. Controlled breathing. The kind of focused intensity that explained why Chris looked the way he did and Luca... didn't. Joey was nearby, already halfway up a modular climbing wall, finding handholds without even looking, chatting casually over his shoulder about attachnt points and load ratings. Great. They'd been here two hours and Joey was already climbing the walls. Literally.
"Check this out!" Chris called, not even looking up. "Fully adjustable resistance, compact design, built to last. We could fit two of these in each gym."
"Each gym?" Luca asked.
"Two gyms," Joey said from halfway up the wall. "Main one on Deck Four for the crew. That's gotta handle a hundred people. Smaller officer's gym for command staff. Plus we're converting part of the hangar."
"The hangar?"
"Basketball hoops," Chris said, not even slowing his reps. "Volleyball nets. Enough balls and sports equipnt to keep people entertained when they're not running portals." He finally looked at Luca, grinning. "I'm thinking shifts. Morning crew, afternoon crew, evening crew. Structured fitness programs. Everyone trains. Every day."
Oh no. Chris leading mandatory daily training sessions for a hundred people. By shifts. Every single day.
Emily appeared beside him, tablet in hand. "It's not just about fitness," she said. "Morale. We're asking people to leave Earth for years. They need outlets. Recreation. Sothing besides work and sleep."
"Exactly." Chris pointed at her. "Fitness and morale. Body and mind."
"This climbing rig would be perfect for balance and endurance training," Joey added.
"And it's fun," Chris said.
"What about this rowing machine?" Danny asked from sowhere behind them, already bug-eyed, hands reaching for the controls.
"Stop that!" Emily rushed over and slapped his hands away. "We're not buying canoes."
"I'll have you know," Chris called out, still not breaking his reps, "rowing machines are a full-body workout. Part of every serious routine."
Emily closed her eyes. Took a breath. "Add it to the list."
Luca sighed. "At this rate we're going to need a cargo ship just for gym equipnt."
"Worth it," Ryan said from behind a rack of kettlebells. "Besides, we've got modular gravity on the Triumph. Localized manipulation, deck by deck. Crank up the Gs in the gym and this equipnt becos ten tis more effective."
Chris's eyes lit up. "Wait, you can do that?"
"Already ran the numbers," Ryan said. "1.5 G, maybe 2 if we're careful."
Joey dropped down from the climbing wall, suddenly very interested. "High-G training with proper gear?"
"Even better." Chris cracked his knuckles. "That's why we need this stuff. High-G training without proper equipnt is just asking for injuries. But with it?" He grinned. "We'd be unstoppable."
Emily slid over to Chris and wrapped her arms around his bicep, giving it an exaggerated squeeze. "Luca, can you imagine Chris without his upper body routine? Look at this." She shook his arm playfully. "It'd be an absolute tragedy."
Chris flexed, clearly enjoying the attention. "These guns don't maintain themselves, you know."
"I bet Sofia liked squeezing those," Zoe said from sowhere behind them.
Chris didn't miss a beat. "Can you bla her?" He flexed again. Emily burst out laughing.
Ryan wandered over, still looking distracted. Luca had noticed it earlier too. Sothing was eating at him. But the absurdity of Emily squeezing Chris's bicep seed to pull him out of his funk. "Are we seriously spending money on climbing walls while Orion Horizons is out there threatening our families?"
Chris's grin faded.
Luca took a breath. "Yeah. We are. Because this is what we do. We build sothing. We don't stop because so corporate assholes in expensive suits tried to scare us." He looked around at the equipnt, the gleaming machines, the climbing wall Joey was now descending from. "Tyler and his team sold out for 250k each and so Mars portal slots. A quarter million credits per person to throw away their futures."
He pointed at the resistance contraption Joey had been testing earlier. "That thing costs forty thousand. And Tyler's team still took the deal."
The silence stretched for a mont.
"So yeah," Luca continued, "we're buying climbing walls. We're setting up two gyms. We're going to have the best-equipped ship in the Solar System, and when Orion Horizons sees what we built, they're going to know they picked the wrong fight."
Chris nodded, slow at first, then harder. "Hell yeah."
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
"Alright then." Luca clapped his hands together. "What's the damage so far?"
Joey and Chris exchanged a look.
"Between the purchases and shipping..." Joey started.
"How much?" Luca asked.
Chris shrugged. "One point four million credits."
Luca's eye twitched. "One point four million. For gym equipnt."
"Investnt," Chris corrected. "In crew wellness and combat readiness."
Luca caught Emily rubbing her temples. "I tried to stop them," she said.
"No you didn't," Ryan said.
"No, I didn't." She turned to Luca, poking his stomach. "Besides, you could use it. Getting a little soft there, Captain."
Chris snorted. "Doughboy's been skipping leg day for months."
"I have not—" Luca started.
"You have," Emily said, but her hand stayed on his stomach, patting it affectionately. "Don't worry. The gym looks good on you when you actually use it." She smiled. "Which you will. Daily. With Chris's new training program."
Luca's protest died in his throat. Besides, if Emily was going to be in the gym every day too, he could think of worse views.
"Fine. Fine. But I want receipts for everything."
Chris pumped his fist. Then pumped it again. Then started shadowboxing the air, which may have been his new thing. Nobody knew with Chris, he got too excited about exercise. Joey was already heading back toward the cable machines, probably to add sothing else to the order.
Two hundred and fifty thousand credits to buy a team's silence.
One point four million to build two gyms on a starship.
Maybe that was the difference between Orion Horizons and the Triumph Initiative. They paid people to give up. Luca's crew spent money on climbing walls and called it an investnt in the future.
It was stupid. It was expensive. It was exactly what they needed.
"Change of plans," Luca said as they walked out of the warehouse. "We're not staying the night."
Emily looked up from her tablet. "We're supposed to be in Arizona tomorrow afternoon."
"One of the teams we're interested in patrols the portals in the Sonoran Desert, southwest of Tucson." Luca was already pulling up the schedule. "I want to watch them in action before we sit down and talk."
Ryan raised an eyebrow. "So we just show up unannounced?"
"We show up and observe. See what they're actually made of when they don't know anyone's watching." Luca said. "Get your shit. We're wheels up in an hour."
Nobody argued. After everything with Orion Horizons, after Tyler's team selling out for pocket change, they all understood. Luca was done playing by other people's schedules.
On the flight to Arizona, Emily pulled out the binder Sabine had given her. Handwritten notes on every team they were scheduled to et. Twenty teams total, from as far away as Panama, scattered across SoCal, Colorado, the Southwest. They were supposed to et this particular group in Phoenix in three days. Three days felt like a lifeti when corporate goons were threatening your family.
But out of all twenty nas in that binder, the Desert Sparks were the only ones that had caught Luca's attention. He briefed the crew on why. Sabine's notes painted a picture: high portal count, solid reputation, a team that operated in rough terrain with minimal support. Four won, all level sixty, stuck waiting for Europa slots that might never co. Self-sufficient and resourceful. People who wouldn't panic when the nearest help was two years away.
"Gabriela Vega," Emily read from the notes. "Team lead. Valeria, Natalia, and Jake round out the roster."
"Jake?" Chris asked. "I thought you said four won."
"Three won and one guy nad Jake." Emily shrugged.
By the ti they crossed into Arizona airspace, the sun was setting over the desert, painting the landscape in shades of orange and red. Luca pressed his forehead against the window. The colors bled together below. Sowhere below, a team was running portals, completely unaware that they were about to be evaluated.
Luca intended to keep it that way.
The Granite Hawk touched down at a private airfield outside Tucson just after dark. Zoe tapped the fuel indicator on the console before anyone moved to unbuckle.
"We're getting low," she said. "Been burning through fuel since Alpha Centauri. We could probably do a couple more hops, but..." She trailed off, letting the implication hang.
Luca leaned over to check. She wasn't wrong. And he'd already made the call back in Houston.
"We've got a couple days before the Phoenix eting," Luca said. "So let's do it now. Zoe, you take Danny and Chris, rendezvous with the Triumph, and bring the whole thing back to Earth orbit. Just like we talked about."
He looked at Emily. She'd been quiet when he'd told her the plan at the gym, processing. Now her expression was calculating, running scenarios.
"We were told to keep it out of cislunar orbit," Joey said. The voice of reason, as always.
"The UER said a lot of things." Emily's voice was steady. "They also told us we'd have full autonomy on the tour. Can't have it both ways." She looked at Luca. "I've been thinking about it since Houston. If we're going to recruit crews, they need to see what they're signing up for. Pictures and stories aren't enough. People need to see that ship with their own eyes."
Zoe was already grinning. "Parking a frigate in Earth orbit while we're doing the victory tour. Let them choke on it."
"It's a statent," Emily continued. "But it's also practical. We can't keep hiding our biggest asset in the Belt while we're trying to convince people to trust us with their futures."
Ryan leaned back in his seat. "And what are they gonna do about it? Ask us nicely to leave?"
"That leaves four of us here," Emily said, shifting to logistics. "You, , Ryan, Joey. No shuttle. No way to reach the Desert Sparks' patrol area."
"Do we even know where they'll be?" Joey asked. "The Sonoran Desert is a hundred thousand square miles. They could be running portals anywhere."
"We'll figure it out on the way," Luca said. "Check portal schedules, overflow reports. Narrow it down. So we find transport. Rent sothing."
Emily nodded, already making a note on her tablet. "Danny, call Karen when you're in transit. She'll want to get ahead of any UER reaction. Fra it as a recruiting necessity, not a political statent."
"Already sent her everything Tyler told us about the two missing Roughnecks," Danny said quietly. "If Orion's pulling this shit in Houston, they're doing it elsewhere. Karen needs to know."
Nobody said anything for a mont. They all knew what Karen had done to the last man who made young people disappear. If Orion was playing those gas, they'd just made themselves a very dangerous enemy.
"The Triumph, though." Danny's tone shifted, lighter now. "Parking it in Earth orbit? She's going to love that move."
"She's going to take credit for it."
"Obviously."
They stepped off the shuttle into the cool desert air. Stars blazed overhead in a way Luca hadn't seen since New Dawn.
Chris was already heading back toward the ramp. Zoe followed, but she paused and looked back.
"Don't have too much fun without us," she said.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
The Granite Hawk lifted off twenty minutes later, climbing until its running lights were just another star among thousands. Luca tracked it until it vanished, then turned to the remaining crew.
"Alright," he said. "Let's find so wheels."
Finding wheels at eleven at night in the middle of the Arizona desert turned out to be harder than expected.
The airfield had exactly two charter helicopters. Both were booked solid through the weekend. The rental car companies were closed. The one rideshare driver willing to take them anywhere wanted three hundred credits just to drive them to Tucson proper.
"It's a bust," Ryan said, slumping against a vending machine outside the airfield's tiny office. "Nothing's moving until morning."
Luca rubbed his eyes. They'd been going since Houston. His legs ached. His back ached. Everything ached. And now they were stuck at a regional airfield with no way to reach the Desert Sparks until soone opened a rental counter.
"Fine," he said. "We find a hotel. Regroup in the morning."
Their driver took them to Tucson. The city sprawled under the desert sky, low buildings and wide streets lit by the orange glow of streetlights. Emily had found a hotel near the center, and ten minutes later, they were standing on the curb outside it, across from a small plaza. Their duffel bags and the armored black stasis case sat on the sidewalk between them.
Luca's attention snagged on the structure in the center of the plaza. A Territory Control Tower. And right next to it, the unmistakable entrance to a System Store.
In D.C., the Regional Control Tower had been crawling with UER security. In Houston, Orion personnel monitored every transaction. Even redith had better security than this. But here? Middle of the night in a small desert city? The plaza was empty. Not a guard in sight. Just the soft glow of the System interface, waiting.
Joey and Emily headed inside to book rooms. Luca stood on the sidewalk, still staring at the store entrance. It was practically begging them to walk in.
Ryan's arm settled around his shoulders.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
Luca looked at the store. Looked at Ryan. Felt a grin spread across his face. He rembered the vehicle list they had seen in Sandworth. The TL9 options they hadn't bought because they were trying to be subtle.
Screw subtle. They were bringing a starship to Earth orbit. They might as well drive sothing that matched.
"Yeah," he said. "I think I am."
He turned toward the hotel entrance. "Em! Don't book a room just yet!"
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